reason than that such
voices always irresistibly allured him, he went in, putting on an air
of having come to look for some one. There were two or three groups of
ladies receiving friends in different parts of the room. At the window
a girl's figure silhouetted itself against the keen light, and as
he advanced into the room, peering about, it turned with a certain
vividness that seemed familiar. This young lady, whoever she was, had
the advantage of Dan in seeing him with the light on his face, and he
was still in the dark about her, when she advanced swiftly upon him,
holding out her hand.

"You don't seem to know your old friends, Mr. Mavering," and the manly
tones left him no doubt.

He felt a rush of gladness, and he clasped her hand and clung to it as
if he were not going to let it go again, bubbling out incoherencies of
pleasure at meeting her. "Why, Miss Anderson! You here? What a piece of
luck! Of course I couldn't see you against the window--make you out! But
something looked familiar--and the way you turned! And when you started
toward me! I'm awfully glad! When--where are you--that is--"

Miss Anderson kept laughing with him, and bubbled back that she was very
glad too, and she was staying with her aunt in that hotel, and they had
been there a month, and didn't he think Washington was charming? But it
was too bad he had just got there with that blizzard. The weather had
been perfectly divine till the day before yesterday.

He took the spray of forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believe
it. I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs to
you." He offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took it in the same
humour.

"What is the language of forceythia?" she asked.

"It has none--only expressive silence, you know."

A middle-aged lady came in, and Miss Anderson said, "My aunt, Mr.
Mavering."

"Mr. Mavering will hardly remember me," said the lady, giving him her
hand. He protested that he should indeed, but she had really made but a
vague impression upon him at Campobello. He knew that she was there with
Miss Anderson; he had been polite to her as he was to all women; but he
had not noticed her much, and in his heart he had a slight for her, as
compared with the Boston people he was more naturally thrown with; he
certainly had not remembered that she was a little hard of hearing.

Miss Van Hook was in a steel-grey effect of dress, and, she had carried
this up into her hair, of w